


in the ruins of man

by aceaaronminyard (necklace)



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Gen, Light Angst, Neil Is an Idiot, but that isn't anything new
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-15
Updated: 2017-01-15
Packaged: 2018-09-17 15:04:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9330632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/necklace/pseuds/aceaaronminyard
Summary: In the aftermath of chaos, Neil looks back on his life.





	

**Author's Note:**

> thank ayah for this tbh. go roast her @atimebombticking on tumblr.

Neil Josten stands at the bottom of a long driveway in Baltimore. 

 

It sounds like the punchline of an overused joke, unfunny, on the cusp of being forgotten.

 

Neil doesn't know why he comes here, but he does. Of course he does. He takes slow steps up the asphalt hill in neon sneakers and doesn't look back at the sleek black car that drove him here. He's in no rush, technically speaking, but something curls around his ribs and pulls him up to his childhood home with sharpened claws. 

 

Here, Neil remembers, is where he learned how to hold a knife without cutting himself. Here, he was cleaning weapons before he was being comforted by silly stuffed animals or toys when he cried. Here, now, skin-deep scars twinge with regret, pain, they ache like a healing bone. 

 

He finds his way to the front door eventually. It's exactly the same as Neil remembers it, the same thick trees lining the area, the same deteriorating shingles on the roof, the same lethal silence surrounding the entire house. 

 

It's like the former home knows what crimes have been committed within it, so it stands, still as stone, hidden away from prying eyes and the judgment of man. Neil doesn't blame it; he'd do the same if his core structure was violated so enthusiastically by the scum of the earth. 

 

(With this thought, he spares a second for Andrew. It makes him pause in his ministrations of picking the lock on the door, scarred hands twitching over cold metal. He tastes phantom blood in his mouth and forces the thoughts away. Mistakes are not on his agenda.) 

 

The padlock holding the door shut falls to his feet with a solid _thud_. Its descent through the air and into the snow is silent, much like the movements Neil carefully takes into the bowels of an abandoned home. He doesn't think the house will mind, but tries to be gentle with his steps just in case. 

 

The first thing he sees is the foyer. It isn't a surprise, but the paint on the walls is long faded and the pictures that used to hang on them have disappeared. Unsurprising. Maybe the Butcher got rid of them as soon as his wife and son escaped from under his nose. Maybe he kept them up for months after they left to keep the public eye from suspecting his plans to track them down like prey. 

 

Neil doesn't care very much when or how the Butcher removed them from his life, so he doesn't hesitate to move forward the ten steps into the living room. All that's left is a piss-stained couch and shattered glass on the floor. He doesn't spare the room any more time and heads forward through what used to be the dining room, then to the guest bedroom that connects to the kitchen. 

 

Nothing useful. Neil Josten didn't come here for a walk down memory lane, but crawling under the surface of a hardened exterior, Nathaniel Wesninski smiles a cruel smile.

 

He heads back the way he came, back through the foyer, and shakes Nathaniel away as the steps leading upstairs creak under his feet. 

 

Neil Josten. #10 Striker for the Palmetto State Foxes. The Ravens disintegrating under the weight of defeat and never recovering the same. Riko dead under his brothers ministrations, and blood still staining his hands red from years on the run. 

 

This is what he tells himself as he walks up the stairs, turns at the landing, puts one foot in front of the other like muscle memory. In front of him at the top of the stairs, there's a bathroom. To the left of that is where his parents' old room used to be, then directly across the hall there's the second guest bedroom and the room he inhabited in for nine years. Maybe ten. He isn't quite sure anymore, but to avoid the room he came all this way to search, he wanders into his parents' old room. 

 

The first thing he notices is that it's trashed. The king-sized mattress looks like it's been burned, starting from the center and moving out to the far corners. The walls are graffitied into oblivion, gang signs old and new taking over where the wallpaper used to be. Neil is loathe to admit that he recognizes some of them, loathes to admit that he reaches a hand out to wipe some lingering grime from the spray paint. 

 

He's almost fond of the disgusting state of the room. There's nothing more than rubble coating the ground in chunks, so he turns back the way he came and heads down the hall where his room is. Was. 

 

Distantly, he asks, is it still his if no one else has lived in it? Does he still have ownership of a room he had to go to extreme measures to get into? 

 

(Is it still his when he had no say over it in the first place?) 

 

It doesn't matter now. After a precursory check of the guest bedroom and the bathroom (and finding nothing but evidence of an abandoned house), Neil jiggles the handle on a familiar door. From memory, he pushes the doorknob up and it clicks open for him, the frames squealing with disuse as the wood swings open on rusting hinges. 

 

In less than a second, he's overcome with the stench of death. He doesn't doubt that something probably died in these ruins; Neil scrunches his nose up and let's his father's eyes observe this closet. 

 

 _Was it always this small?_ , he thinks, curling his lip up in disgust as he takes hollow steps on carpeted floor.

 

Instead of dwelling on the sad shape of the walls and floor (and, to be frank, the ceiling as well), Neil crouches by the corner where his bed used to be. He takes great care in slowly peeling up the smelly carpet by the edges, revealing dark hardwood floors. It comes up easy under his fingers, like it's trying to make up for the discomfort this is causing Neil, causing Nathaniel. 

 

He tries not to gag at the smell of decay, but it burns his eyes and the grime coats his fingers and he _can't leave yet_. 

 

One breath in. One breath out. He thinks of Andrew waiting for him and he centers himself.

 

He takes the Phillips head screwdriver from his back pocket and carefully counts out the wooden planks from the far left wall. A deep breath in, a creak of the floorboards, the pop of solid wood snapping up under careful ministrations. 

 

Neil brings himself to reach out to the plastic bag hidden beneath the floors, forcing back the gag he can feel crawling up his throat, and stands from his crouch on shaky legs. The plastic is stiff in his hands, but his fingers are stiffer.

 

Cleaning up his mess is a blur, popping the padlock back in place on the way out settles his tense shoulders, and walking back down the driveway makes Neil's chest lighter than he could've hoped for. 

 

Ichirou Moriyama meets him at the bottom of the driveway. He's in exactly the same place as Neil left him, hands in the pockets of a sleek grey suit (which Neil hopes, for his sake, is insulated), chin tilted up in quiet defiance and leaning back on the car they came in. It's the dead of winter, but the Lord doesn't look cold. 

 

Neil unwraps a thick blue binder from the plastic and holds it out with still fingers. A bodyguard climbs from the drivers seat and takes it from him instead of letting Ichirou take it, but Neil isn't offended. He stares at the Lord with a Butcher's expression, blank, quiet, unassuming.

 

Deadly.

 

"I hope this satisfies you, Lord Moriyama." 

 

Ichirou brushes the comment off like it's nothing, pushing himself off the black car they came in. 

 

"You are twenty-two today," he says instead. It's not necessarily a 'happy birthday,' but Neil nods anyway. 

 

"Minyard has been calling your cell," he continues, taking a gloved hand from his pocket and pulling Neil's phone out with it. With one swift movement, he tosses it to Neil and puts his hand back in the warmth of his suit jacket. 

 

"Thank you, Lord," Neil says respectively. After several years and very few visits, the man in front of him still strikes a fear in Neil that Nathan could never accomplish on his own. 

 

Lord Moriyama doesn't move, though. Neil is half expecting to be left in the cold with the thin jacket he has on, but instead, the Lord opens the door and stands, expectant. 

 

"Get in, Wesninski." 

 

Neil doesn't need to be told twice. He gets in the car with as much grace as is expected, sliding over to let Ichirou in. The door slams shut behind them with decided finality. 

 

Neil isn't stupid enough to ask where they're going, but the sound of the door closing behind them still rings in his ear. 

 

Fox Tower, seven hours later, is the best thing he's seen all day.

 

Ichirou, Neil learns, sends his regards a week later with a threatening birthday card and an ominous  _thank you for your services._

 

Nathaniel smiles a cruel smile.

**Author's Note:**

> this took me a week to put into words and it was originally like 2.5k. i realized i loved myself more than that and chopped it down to this lil weenie thing.
> 
> leave my depraved ass comments bc i love validation, or hmu at @castrumwritings on tumblr


End file.
